Prognosticators have maybe five (or even as few as two) possible Oscar winners, and most lists of ten (or so) have many of the same titles though perhaps in various orders. But folks, the nominations have yet to come in and the Academy made that clear today with its list of 282 feature films for 2012 that are eligible for Best Picture.

Rules are rules and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially considers a feature film that played in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County by midnight, December 31 and begin a minimum seven consecutive day run.

Under Academy rules, a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format. Feature films that receive their first public exhibition or distribution in any manner other than as a theatrical motion picture release are not eligible for Academy Awards in any category.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Dog Days to Django Unchained; The First Time to Flight; Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted to Magic Mike; 17 Girls to The Sessions… They're all on the official list, so don't count out the non-elite not making Awards headlines.

The 85th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 10, 2013, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013

It’s not every day you see a movie and ask yourself, “Why does this thing even exist?” But I’m truly puzzled by the existence of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I get that it’s based on a novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, part of a pop literary genre — launched by Grahame-Smith himself — that takes famous figures, fictional or otherwise, and pits them against vampires and zombies. I get that it’s directed by Timur Bekmambetov, the zany Russian-Kazakh mastermind behind cult apocalyptic favorites Night Watch and Day Watch (2004 and 2006, respectively), not to mention the stupidly entertaining 2008 action thriller Wanted. I even grant you that it’s probably OK to make up wholly imaginary motives for why Abraham Lincoln might have wanted to end slavery, motives having to do not with the preservation of human dignity, equality between all people and all that rot, but because it was kind of a handy sideline to the task of ridding the world of vampires. I know and accept all of this. And still I ask — Why?more »

Saturday at WonderCon, Timur Bekmambetov debuted new footage and a 3-D trailer for his upcoming revisionist fantasy-actioner history lesson Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter -- the Seth Grahame-Smith-penned retelling of how America's 16th President saved the nation... from vampires. Watch the 2-D version of the trailer after the jump and marinate on the wholly new lessons we can learn from the saga of Honest Abe -- or, as star Benjamin Walker explained to the crowd in Anaheim: "As an American, I want to know that my leaders are strong and have the capacity to make decisions -- and cut some heads off."more »

Here's a trailer for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the forthcoming Timur Bekmambetov film featuring our 16th president as an axe-wielding killer of the undead. There's not much more to say that you can't derive from the super slo-mo, mega-loud hyperviolence promised herein. America's youth has got to get its history from somewhere, I guess.more »

In 1865, actor and Confederate loyalist John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in the balcony of Ford's Theatre, committing one of the most notorious crimes in American history. In 2013, Fox News talking head Bill O'Reilly will team up with Tony and Ridley Scott for a two-hour National Geographic documentary exploring the events surrounding Lincoln's death, adapted from Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever, co-written by O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. But with so many previous Lincoln assassination projects in the ether, what new ground can O'Reilly and the Scott brothers tread in Killing Lincoln?more »